Mr Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace has outlined two ways in which Anguilla can improve its tourism industry and make it more sustainable and competitive. He gave the advice to the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association when he was the keynote speaker at its Annual General Meeting several days ago.
Mr Vanderpool-Wallace, a Harvard University graduate, is a well-sought after speaker and is a former Minister of Tourism in the Bahamas. He has a wealth of experience in tourism development having given many years of service to the Caribbean Tourism Organisation and to the development of the industry in the region. His contribution to tourism has been well recognised in that he was awarded the CBE by Queen Elizabeth the Second.
Here is one of the two pointson which he addressed the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association:
“Your small size, your incredible beauty and your wonderful people give you an enormous head start. All you need to do is figure out a way to move from 50% occupancy to 90% occupancy. We are constantly speaking about the need to get new investors in tourism. We already have new investors in tourism. How about filling the vacant rooms that investors have already? There is no better promotion for new investors to find that the existing rooms at a destination are in great demand and are being filled.
“Whenever we lay out that challenge, hoteliers ‘know’ that one can never run such a high occupancy. Then we ask them, how is it possible for cruise lines to run 100% year round? It is clear that we are still stuck in the old ways of doing business from which we must escape even if it means copying some of the techniques used by the cruise lines. The common perspective is that if the general manager of a hotel runs 80% occupancy year round they get a bonus. If the general manager of a cruise line runs 80% year round they get fired.
“One simple problem in our region is not that we have been too ambitious. It is that we have not been ambitious enough. If our properties are running 50% occupancy, and 80% of our GDP comes from tourism, by moving our occupancy to 75%, we increase our contribution to GDP by 50%! Such is the power of tourism.”
Here is the second point on which Mr Vanderpool-Wallace addressed the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association:
“There is a very powerful way for us to know when we are attaining our goals in tourism growth and development. Departure taxes and other taxes on tourism tell us that we have yet to understand our primary business sector fully. Only someone who does not understand the primary industry would consciously make it less and less competitive. With such relatively low occupancies throughout our region, we have yet to get demand for our products to the point, that it needs to be, to provide the best for our people. It only requires a simple piece of arithmetic to show the governments of the region that the amount of taxes they collect from more people working – and from higher occupancies – are far, far larger than the amount of taxes that they are being asked to remove.
“I am therefore looking forward to the day when we become so good that we stop charging departure taxes and start charging admission. With perseverance and dedication, I don’t think that day is as far into the future as some people think.”
